Your Right to Know

In an effort to get her supporters to vote in a primary election in which she has no opponent, Democratic secretary of state hopeful Nina Turner apparently gave them bad information on how to vote early.

Turner, the Cleveland state senator running to unseat Secretary of State Jon Husted as Ohio’s top elections official this fall, told supporters in an email that those who fill out an absentee ballot for the May 6 primary “can drop it off at your local polling place or mail it in to your local Board of Elections.” However, the first part is incorrect.

Absentee ballots may be returned only to county board of elections offices, not to the schools, churches and public buildings that constitute most polling locations on Election Day.

Angelique Roche, campaign manager for Turner, said the instructions in the email are correct because, “For the purposes of early voting, your polling location is your local board of elections.” She declined to say why the email appeared to make a distinction and would not answer questions beyond a prepared statement.

Turner, who has harshly criticized the GOP for what she calls voter suppression, was encouraging people on her email list to register, request an absentee ballot and return it on time. Yesterday was the last day for Ohioans to register to vote in the

May 6 primary and, because of a recent law change, also the last time they could register and vote on the same day.

“The whole point is to encourage people to exercise their right to vote,” Roche said. “That is what the senator is striving for.”

Avi Zaffini, a spokesman for Husted’s campaign, called Turner’s email a mistake and said, “I am just glad that it has been caught so we can inform voters not to follow her advice so they won’t have their votes suppressed.”

Biden said that laws in Ohio and Wisconsin were passed to shorten early voting, limit voting hours, cut evening hours and eliminate weekend voting.

Ohio’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a law trimming Ohio’s early voting period from 35 to about 28 days, beginning this fall, and Husted set uniform voting hours for the 2014 election from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the final two Saturdays before the Nov. 4 election.

That means there will be no in-person, early voting in the evenings, on Sundays or on the final two days before Election Day. However, even with those changes, Ohio’s early voting period is among the longest in the U.S.

“That means people can’t vote after church; it means hard-working Americans have to take time off from work to be able to vote,” Biden said in the video. “It’s time to stand up and to fight back.”

Republicans were quick to mention that there is no early voting in Biden’s home state of Delaware.